In case anyone else doesn't understand, the point of my original post was that I care about other people and when a fellow cyclist comes to serious harm on our roads, I want to acknowledge that on this cycling forum as it's so easily overlooked in the news pages.
I hadn't reckoned on the hostility such an innocuous article would engender from forum members. That any forum member can be so devoid of pity as eTim is difficult for me to to grasp but for him to actually type the response he did makes me despair. As for Lemmy's remark,
thank your lucky stars that you live in a society where you can live your daily life so divorced from reality.
I would remind him that while he was shooting things with his camera, many of my colleagues paid the ultimate price for the free society we all now enjoy because other people were shooting at them with guns!
Perhaps Lemmy's proximity to some of the nasty things which go on in this world has so inured him to reports of death and serious injury that he has lost all compassion for his fellow man?
I have covered a few wars and many famines and awful world events in my career and sometimes seen things that made me feel pretty sick.
I don't know but what I do know is that, were it not for the sacrifices made by countless British people over the last century in particular, the likes of Lemmy would not have the right to free speech, nor the right to abuse the privilege with impunity.
Perhaps some of those displaying such lack of compassion as Lemmy and eTim might feel differently about a lot of things had they attended just a dozen or so of the funeral processions at Wootton Bassett over recent years and witnessed what grief really is in British society. If nothing else, there were great lessons to be learned about respect and dignity there, something sadly lacking in some parts not far from here, so that one cyclist in Cheltenham is about so much more than just a news item copied on to a cycling forum page to be belittled in import by ignorant people.
Perhaps incredibly, reading further within the same forum thread, I note that Peasjam takes offence at something by HarryB, the offensiveness of which is lost on me. Peasjam, if you feel offended by Harry, then how can you not be offended by the cold, insensitive manner displayed by some others in this forum?
God bless all who wear uniform and put themselves in harm's way for the good of all the people of this great nation and beyond.
I care,
Indalo